Do we need any more purveyors of the miraculousness of poetry? Or do we want to see more fit and agile poetics meeting the historical moment we're living in? As American cultural dominance crumbles before the world, are we to be left with just personal salvation poetry?

Almost in concert, the major poetry institutions decide who is to be elevated based on absorbable sociological categories (actual poetics comes second). Collectively, these construct a single Liberal Capitalist Subject that dutifully avoids class struggle. C'est là, c'est tout.

Great edition. I memorized several of those middle English poems back in the day. They still inform my sense of line and rhythm.

Confronting alienation from the means of production by highlighting constraints (from lived-life structures to aesthetics), can avail the blurry outlines of "freedom" (if Freiheit figures into your system of thought). But feigning direct access to it, just tells us you're a hack.

I don't need poets playing at being political pundits on this app, I need to see their poetic works with the cultural-ideological downstream effects of their alleged politics skillfully woven in there. But alas, it's mainly "hot take" tweets paired with flat, normie poetry.

Dialectical materialist poetics lives by engaging ideological contradiction. The logic, the wit, the quirkiness of it flows from there. It is implicitly an affront to slop academic liberalism and its "I"-centered ritualisms. It has fresh surge potential, and thus, enemies galore.

Grateful to be given the opportunity to contribute "Ceasefires" and "It's Sunday", two poems from my new collection, Salvage Nation: 100 Sonnets (Winter Editions, 2026). Thank you to the editors!